Jovi It’s that time again. Another year has passed. Another year older. Another year for me to look back on the and smile not only for what you have accomplished, but who you are. The transition from little girl to just a plain girl continues. It’s uncomfortable and hard for me. More because I don’t want you to grow up…well, except those sassy moments and eye rolls when I am ready to go ahead and send you off to college. Those are the truest moments of God teaching me patience. But you bring so much to my life and those around you. You have filled my house with more art projects than I could ever imagine, and some of them that need detailed explanations for me to understand what they even are. Why we have not bought stake in the Scotch tape brand, I will never understand. You literally, at…Continue Reading

Over the past few months, we have been inundated with labels. We have watched people, social classes, and members of political parties be labeled broadly. We have replaced love with hate…respect with anger. Stephen Colbert said it best on Tuesday night during his election special. We have overdosed on the poison. You have a gentle high as you take each sip to hate the other side a little more. To partake so much in order to believe you are right…and it tastes good. But the fallout is dangerous. We have developed a climate where Mexicans and muslims question if their days in this country are limited. Where some muslim women have left their hijab’s at home in order to feel some sense of safety outside the walls of their safe space. A climate where my chocolate brothers and sisters have to revaluate if the progress that has been made is all…Continue Reading

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way… What the hell…? People…what are we doing? I have to admit, I started this blog a week or two ago. I had some anger, some questions and a few curse words. I pulled back and didn’t hit publish because, well, my mom would kill me if she saw those words in print. But today, we are talking about skittles. SKITTLES. Unfortunately, in this country, we have a lot of our own ‘skittles.’ We have a presidential candidate more concerned on building concrete fences then living out what the Bible he claims to read says to do. We have a nation of people in our streets who don’t know how to deal with the feelings of the heart, but know the feeling of a trigger momentarily makes them numb, and numbness outweighs emotions. We have an issue between our men in…Continue Reading

SIX Six years you’ve been my roommate, my best friend, my mini me, my happiness, my frustration and on some days, my rock. And my goodness, has the transition into little girl has begun. I’ve got bottles of nail polish and chapstick, because you know we aren’t stepping into that world of lipstick quite yet, all over the place. I have a flat iron in the bathroom that I pretend every morning I know how to use but is mostly just me praying I don’t burn a chunk of hair out of your head as I tame the morning hair beast. There is a stash of hair bows, some are hideous Jovi, that I still can’t figure out how to get them to stay in your hair on some days. And those silly hair ties, they are dumb. They are too small for me to figure out with my fingers.…Continue Reading

Today, you turn five. Five… Jovi, please stop growing. Please stop showing the signs of maturity, the ability to do so much on your own, the independence, being friends with boys…all of it. Stay right here, this age, this size. I can deal with your bad mood days, the constant “why daddy?” and Taylor Swift blaring throughout the house. I can’t deal with knowing you are growing into an independent girl, full of life and personality and a laugh that, for that brief moment, shows me a glimpse of what heaven will one day be like. You don’t always need me like you used to and that’s hard to get used to. So for now, I find joy in the little things. In these moments, I treasure our trips at night to take a bath with you rocking out from above on my shoulders, reaching ever so long to try and touch…Continue Reading

I’ve been processing a quote I read this week where the author was talking about lives, our lives, and what it means to own it. It kind of stopped me… “Loyalty is not stupidity.” A lot of us, including me, live in this world where we believe to be loyal is to be present at all times and through whatever situations, whether that be in a work environment, relationships, friendships, whatever. But as I have been processing, how many times do we confuse or mask stupidity with loyalty? Let’s be honest, some of the people we become loyal to don’t have our backs or truly care about what happens outside of their box, their world. So this week, where does your loyalties lie and do they deserve to lie there? Loyalty can be beautiful and even some example of sacrificial love. But don’t allow stupidity to creep in, where you…Continue Reading

One of my favorite movies growing up was Mrs. Doubtfire. I mean, how could you not like it? A dude, dressed as a woman, an old and ugly one at that, spends the time with his children he is afraid he will miss after a bitter divorce. It was an absolutely hilarious movie, especially for a 12 year old. But as it was told to the world last night that Robin Williams had died, and not to the hands of an ugly disease or a violent crime, but at the hands of himself, I begin to kind of process the whole situation. Depression is real. It’s significant. And it is crippling. I did what everyone does after a tragedy hits…I got on Twitter. The tributes, movie lines, images and sadness poured out, tweet after tweet after tweet. Each wondering how someone like this could fall into such a pit that the…Continue Reading

One of the cool things I get to do is the graphics for the church I attend here in Louisville, on UofL’s campus (I know, I know, but those people need Jesus too.) The new series coming up is called ‘Me to We.’ I don’t know the content in this series, and I normally don’t. I just create. But as I was finishing up this series, I got to thinking about what ‘We to Me’ meant to me. And my mind went back to Tuesday night at The Family Scholar House, where our Missional Community serves monthly. This particular night, the kids of the community there had taken the huge foam blue blocks that are scattered in three huge bins and made a very impressive car. A car that turned into a bus, and then before long, a tractor trailer. Not because they wanted to make it bigger, but because there…Continue Reading

Working on a project, I was given this quote. Three words…powerful. Your story is a wonderful one. Even more, the story encapsulates it all. It’s a work of multiple chapters, sections. More for myself now than anything else, but your story is much bigger than that failed chapter. Don’t focus on it. Keep writing it. And never be afraid to let people read it. Allow them to identify with the main character, make that bond and be better for it. Trust it.

The other day, a friend and I were having a conversation about what we would say to our fifteen year younger self if we could. If we could sit down, write a letter, fire up the ole’ flux capacitor and send Einstein (the dog, not the person) back in time with a note around his neck, what would the words say? As I started thinking about it, there were tons of things that flooded in. Fifteen years ago, I was an 18-year old kid coming out of high school with absolutely no idea what I was going to do in my life. Literally. No clue. I knew I had to go to school because that’s what you were supposed to do, possibly looking into the ministry because that is the family lineage, but as far as what I was really going to do with my life, I had no idea, no plan and…Continue Reading